Along the shores of Lake Attersee, Lake Mondsee and other Austrian lakes lie secrets from a distant past. Since 2011, five Austrian pile dwelling settlements have been part of the transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site "Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps". These archaeological sites are unique: they are located in the soil of lakes and wetlands and are exceptionally well-preserved by water and lake sediments. This means that objects made of wood, textiles and other organic materials – things that would otherwise have long since disappeared – have survived to the present day.

However, there is one problem: because these settlements lie underwater or deep in the ground, ordinary visitors cannot see them. The UNESCO World Heritage Site remains invisible to the public – hence the name of the project: "Surfaced".

The project "Surfaced – the Digital Pile Dwellings" has brought this hidden world to life digitally. Over 500 objects from eleven different Austrian collections have been digitalised by the Kuratorium Pfahlbauten (Association for the Curatorship of Pile Dwellings) together with the 3D studio Crazy Eye – including high-resolution 3D scans and historical documents.

What can be found in this virtual collection? Everything imaginable from the everyday lives of people in the Stone Age and Bronze Age:

• Ceramic vessels in various shapes and sizes – cooking pots, bowls and containers
• Tools made of stone and metal – axes, knives and spear points
• Jewellery and personal items – beads, pendants and rings
• But above all, organic finds that would otherwise be lost and may be more difficult to preserve in the future: wood fragments, bones, seeds and even hazelnut shells from the Stone Age
• Special pieces such as dried wild apples and textile remnants – tiny windows into the everyday lives of our ancestors

The objects come from different epochs of pile dwelling settlements in Austria: from the Neolithic (Stone Age) through the Bronze Age – a period of approximately 2,500 years of human history.

What is special about this digital collection: it brings scattered objects together for the first time. The finds are stored in museums such as the Natural History Museum Vienna, the state museums of Upper Austria and Carinthia, in small heritage houses, in university collections – and even in private collections that would otherwise remain hidden from the public. Through digitalisation, all these treasures are now brought together in one virtual location.

These objects are much more than just old things. They are testimonies of people who lived here thousands of years ago, ate, worked and raised their families. The exceptionally good preservation underwater gives us an unparalleled insight into their world – much more detailed than what we know from most other archaeological sites.

The digital collection creates access for everyone: school classes can explore the objects in the classroom, researchers can conduct comparative studies without travelling, and private individuals can discover out of curiosity how people lived in prehistoric times.

The objects are accessible in the free web application PfahlbauKompass. Here, users can explore the 3D models from all angles, retrieve information about the objects and filter them by material, epoch or excavation site. It is a "Pile Dwelling Museum for your Pocket".

The high quality of this digital collection was honoured in 2024 with the Digital Creative Award at an international conference on cultural heritage and new technologies. This is recognition that here not only digitalisation has taken place, but also communication and mediation of the heritage.